Events

Remember… Remember…the 8th of November

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Remember remember the 5 November!

Remembering the lengths people will go to to destroy what they see as bad and the endless consequences of polarisation.

Remember on the 11th November the seen and unseen consequences of war and fighting…

Remembering the value of collaboration, working together in a respectful and harmonious way to achieve a result which is for the common good.

Re-membering,  dissolving the sense of  alienation in discovering who we and others truly are…

the critical remembering…

and of which we will be beautifully reminded on November 8 to the 10th…

Please let Gio know if you are coming…for details see below and Simplybeing.co.uk>Events

James Low: 
Evening Talk & Weekend Teaching in Oxford

“Easy Illumination”
  • November 8th – 10th 2019

“We inhabit a paradox as our true nature is hidden by our way of looking. Using the structure of a short Dzogchen text by the extraordinary Tibetan Yogini Ayu Khandro we will explore how not to get in the way of our mind’s intrinsic illumination. The focus will be on the clarity of the authentic view and the depth of meditation practice”.

James-Low-by-Bernd-Obermayr

James Low is a disciple and teacher in the Byangter and Khordong lineages of the late Chhimed Rigdzin Lama.

He began studying and practising Tibetan Buddhism in India in the 1960’s and received teachings from Kalu Rinpoche, Chatral Rinpoche, Kanjur Rinpoche and Dudjom Rinpoche. Having met his root teacher, Chhimed Rigdzin Lama (also known as C R Lama), he lived in his home in West Bengal, India for many years, serving him as required and being taught many aspects of the tradition. During this period in India James did several retreats and pilgrimages in the Himalayas. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, on his return to Europe, he also had teachings and guidance from Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche.

James translated many tantric texts and sadhanas with CR Lama who wanted texts from his lineages, Byangter and Khordong, to be available in English. CR Lama asked James to teach in 1976 and later gave him the transmissions necessary to do this, together with full lineage authority. In particular, James was encouraged to give the traditional instructions using methods that enable people in the west to get the point. 

James has been teaching in this way for over twenty years. James regularly teaches the principles of dzogchen in Europe and he publishes translations and commentaries from time to time.

James studied at Edinburgh and other universities and has retired from his work in London as a Consultant Psychotherapist in the National Health Service. He is slowly winding down his private psychotherapy practice. He has taught on many psychotherapy trainings in Britain.

Evening Talk:

Friday November 8th, 7pm- 9pm

Weekend Teaching:

Saturday November 9th, 9.30am – 1pm & 2.30pm – 6pm (with breaks)
Sunday November 10th, 9.30am – 1pm (with breaks)

  • James will alternate between oral teaching & meditation practice

Costs and Offerings for Teaching:

The prices below cover costs only: venue hire, James’ travel costs, etc.

Evening Talk Only: £10
Teaching Sessions (a.m. or p.m): £15 per session (am or pm)
Whole Event: £50
In the Buddhist tradition teaching on meditation is offered without charge so there is no fee for the teaching offered this weekend.  

If you wish to offer a donation (dana) to support the work of the teacher and those who help him, then please do so at any point during the event


Both payment for costs and dana are cash only please on the door!


Gio

 

London Talk…The seductive creativity of ignorance: delusion as a way of life

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James Low gave a talk for Shang Shung UK in their new centre on 25th Feb.

Here is a link to that talk and video …. ‘Why emptiness is liberating’….

and I have just finished making something audible from the talk below that James gave at their invitation  last year

The seductive creativity of ignorance: delusion as a way of life

James Low, 23 April 2015

Organised by Shang Shung UK, at SOAS, London University

“You are not who you think you are and, since self-knowledge tends to be conceptual, it is easy to get lost. The self is a topic that is explored in all schools of buddhism. Tonight we will look at it from some aspects of the dzogchen tradition.”

Recorded by Baz Hurrell

You can listen to it here.

This recording was made on a mobile phone and trying to make it listenable has been a challenge. The replacement introduction was recorded later in the year… as for the rest, having just luckily found out how to process over-saturated sound, it’s mostly pretty good. I’m glad of this because it’s dharma in a nutshell… it includes the vision of a mandala of communication,connectivity,creative interactions, resonance and harmony…. and an explanation as to how our constructed sense of self is a shape which serves to limit our ability to inhabit that vision – “You can’t dance with a lobster!”

Now available – James Low 2015 Emerson college recordings

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Chris, who lives in Germany, has completed a big job in reorganising the audio site so well done to him…and, following on from that, he has just  uploaded the recordings made in July for you to listen to. So just click here or look on the simplybeing.co.uk website where you’ll find it under audios…If you visit the site you will see that there are other interesting new additions shown on the right of the title page which Barbara has recently put up – including a video of meditation for escaping ‘imprisonment’… whether the bars are metal or mental!

 

I’ll leave the bit below (which i put up while we were waiting for the recordings) for a little while yet…..In the meantime (a bit like the potter’s wheel) how about a look at The three modes of energy  a text which has just become available… and then there’s some art work you might enjoy by Stuart Edmondson a Dartmoor based artist….if you look under ‘process’ you will see it is like the freshness of responsivity arising from openness and these quite took my breath away.

Then i laughed a bit at how amazed we are if an artist manages to capture a good likeness of a tree on paper or canvas…If its really ‘life- like’ we are so amazed, there’d be a queue to look at it…yet if we look at the tree itself that’s maybe not so amazing ?! Maybe its all amazing…